the Exchequer, and the "Times" and
numerous other journals; that every editor will expect a copy; that the
interests of science require that he, poor as he is, shall give no less
than eleven copies to the public; and that the most that can be hoped for
from the first edition is, that it will not bring him in debt. His book
appears, but the price is high, for the reason that the taxes are heavy,
and the general demand for books is small. Cheap laborers cannot buy
books; soldiers and sailors cannot buy books; and thus does centralization
diminish the market for literary talent while increasing the cost of
bringing it before the world. Centralization next steps in, in the shape
of circulating libraries, that, for a few guineas a year, supply books
throughout the kingdom, and enable hundreds of copies to do the work that
should be done by thousands, and hence it is that, while first editions of
English works are generally small, so very few of them ever reach second
ones. Popular as was Captain Marryat, his first editions were, as he
himself informed me, for some time only 1,500, and had not then risen
above 2,000. Of Mr. Bulwer's novels, so universally popular, the first
edition never exceeded 2,500; and so it has been, and is, with others.
With all Mr. Thackeray's popularity, the sale of his books has, I believe,
rarely gone beyond 6,000 for the supply of above thirty millions of
people. Occasionally, a single author is enabled to fix the attention of
the public, and he is enabled to make a fortune--not from the sale of
large quantities at low prices, but of moderate quantities at high prices.
The chief case of the kind now in England is that of Mr. Dickens, who
sells for twenty shillings a book that costs about four shillings and
sixpence to make, and charges his fellow-laborers in the field of
literature an enormous price for the privilege of attaching to his numbers
the advertisements of their works, as is shown in the following paragraph
from one of the journals of the day:--

"Thus far, no writer has succeeded in drawing so large pecuniary profits
from the exercise of his talents as Charles Dickens. His last romance,
"Bleak House," which appeared in monthly numbers, had so wide a
circulation in that form that it became a valuable medium for advertising,
so that before its close the few pages of the tale were completely lost in
sheets of advertisements which were stitched to them. The lowest price for
such an advertise